Eight New Plays Receiving Their Florida Premiers

Tickets are selling for the Eighteenth Annual Ten-Minute Play Festival taking place at the Jane B. Cook Theatre, FSU/Asolo Center for the Performing Arts, with just three remaining performances–May 12, 13 (evenings at 7:30 p.m.) and 14 (Sunday at 2 p.m. with the award ceremony following). Each performance is of all the competing plays plus a reprise performance of the 2023 Student Ten-Minute Playwriting Festival Best Play, Elaina Bayard’s (Saint Stephen’s Episcopal School) A MATTER OF TIME. While we encourage purchasing tickets in advance, we’ll do our best to sell tickets to anyone who walks up to the theater

In the competition for the Verna Safran Prize for Best Play, here are the plays and the playwrights:

15 SECONDS by Bruce Karp (Fort Lauderdale)

BACK TO ONE by Keith Whalen (Sarasota)

ETERNITY by Elan Garonzik (Oakland Park)

IN REMEMBRANCE by Michelle Pascua (Celebration)

PARADISE BREAKUP by Risa Lewak (Nokomis)

PITY MOURNER by Paul Donnelly (Tallahassee)

A SQUAD OF THEIR OWN by Bethany Dickens Assaf (Oviedo)

STEAM FOG by John Kelly (Deland)

Visit here to view the festival playbill.

Theatre Odyssey’s special guest, celebrated playwright Gary Garrison joins award-winning actress Carolyn Michel, distinguished actor, director, and teacher Gabriel Ortiz, and the fine actor, director, writer, and co-founder of SaraSolo Productions, Blake Walton to decide both the Best Play and Runner-up play. Garrison will also present a workshop, Story Through Character, for festival ticket holders on Saturday afternoon, May 13 (details here), and will lead a Question & Answer following Saturday evening’s performance of the plays.